Master These Online Skills

The 3 Things You Need To Master To Grow Your Business Online

So you want to grow your business online, eh? GREAT ... welcome to a continually growing industry. I'm going to start this article with a warning. Marketing online is not difficult, however, there is so much to learn and so much information out there that it can seem difficult and confusing.

Today, I'm going to discuss the 3 things that I feel you need to master in order to grow your business on the Internet.

1. Mastering Your Auto-Responder
2. Mastering Online Advertising
3. Mastering The Art Of Follow-Up
   

#1 Mastering Your Auto-Responder

You need to master the use of an auto-responder. Can you live without one? Sure ... but you can live better WITH one ... trust me.

Your auto-responder can help you manage your leads, contact your leads and even help you generate leads.

Steps to mastering your Auto-responder

1. Register
2. Setup your lists
3. Setup your follow-up emals
4. Add new prospects
5. Send a broadcast email
6. Setup a subscriber form

1. Register

We recommend and use Response Magic. Register for your account here http://www.myautoresponder.info/

With Response Magic, you can manually enter up to 20 prospects a day without a required confirmation email. At 20 prospects a day, you'll add 600 prospects a month and 7,200 in a year! Prospects are the lifeline of your business and using a good auto-responder to manage your prospects if vital to the long term growth of your business.

Remember, the average individual will see your information 7 to 10 times before taking action and joining ... for some it's much longer!

2. Setup Your Lists

Once you are registered, you want to login to your account and setup your lists. You'll want to setup a list for the different leads you might generate. Example, I use a program called EarthFriendlyBiz (http://www.askjanet.ws/) and this program generates both leads and signups so I would setup a list at Response Magic for EFB Leads and one for EFB Members. You can adapt this to your situation.

If you are just beginning, you can create one list for your prospects and learn to followup and connect with them through your auto-responder.

3. Setup Your Follow-Up Emails

You'll need to setup an automated reply that your subscriber will receive immediately, as well, you'll want to setup a series of automated emails. You can write your own or contact your upline sponsor for a pre-written series. We offer our members pre-written letters they can just copy and paste to their auto-responder.

4. Add New Prospects

Once your list and letters are setup, you now need to add your prospects.

• People you meet who give you their business card
• People who email you and agree to subscribe to your list
• People you connect with on instant messenger
• Business Opportunity leads that you call

You'll want to add as much information as you have available so that you can keep good records for your prospects. Remember, your auto-responder is also a contact manager and you will be able to keep notes and records of your communication with prospects as the come through your 'system'.

5. Send A Broadcast Email

Auto-responders are a great resource to feed your prospects information about your business and the resources you use, however, it needs to be said that you should never rely on your automated messages to build the trust you need in your prospect. That comes in the form of personal emails that you can send by using the Broadcast email feature.

Once a week, at minimum, you need to send an email to your list with an update of your week, your progress in your business, you may share an article you enjoyed or share a lesson you learned. The idea is to let your reader begin to get to know you ... on a day to day level. Your prospects are not going to blindly join your program, you need to build a rapport with your prospects with the intent to encourage contact and action.

6. Setup A Subscriber Form

It's ok .. I can hear you gasping from here, but don't worry. It's not nearly has hard as you might think to create a subscriber form. In fact, I wrote an entire report on how to setup your Response Magic account and create a subscriber form to add to blog. Anyone can do this ... trust me! http://www.mywealthyblog.com/

Once your own blog is ready, you can then learn to advertise online using reputable resources to attract subscribers to your new list.

#2. Mastering Online Advertising

Mastering online advertising can be a full time job and that's why you leave the 'advertising' part to the masters and simply master the use of the resources we recommend. In this section, I'm going to discuss the use of a few simple resources. There are many programs in each category and they all function very similarly.

The key to mastering online advertising and making it work is to get the programs setup (basic setup) then learn how to use them and use them.

1. Traffic Exchanges

These can be an effective way to bring traffic to your new blog with the form to subscribe to your list. The key to a Traffic Exchange is to get the program setup (add your business url which in this case should be the new blog you setup with the subscriber form) then learn to surf a minimum number of sites each day to maximize the traffic to your site.

My traffic exchange of choice is TrafficSwarm. Join Free here. I highly recommend the monthly upgrade - you can set and "forget". I would enter this ad on Traffic Swarm

Enter To Win $250 In Earth
Friendly Organic Products
You Can Do Well by Doing Good
http://freeproduct.blogspot.com/

Once setup, you can earn credits by clicking ads. If you are an upgraded member, you will receive a set amount of credits each month based on your upgraded membership.

Let's move on and talk about using online lists and safelists.

2. Safelists and Other Online Lists

Safelists and other online lists, such as ListJoe and YourLuckyList all function quite similarly. You subscribe to the list and in doing so, you agree to receive email from other members of that list. In return, you have the ability to email members of the list.

My favourite list of all is List Joe. Upgrade to the onetime Lifetime upgrade of $197 and you can email 5000 random members every 3 days ... forever! And believe me, ListJoe members respond to ads!

Join List Joe here

With ListJoe, you can also read other ListJoe member's emails and earn further credits to send emails to ListJoe members. It's the most active member's site I have ever seen.

Make sure that once you join and upgrade that you login every three days to send your ad to invite ListJoe members to subscribe to your list and give them your new blog address with your auto-responder form (example: http://freeproduct.blogspot.com/)

3. Mastering The Art Of Follow-up

Ok, you've made it this far not don't close the page just yet ... anyone can master the art of follow-up, even you. We all had to learn how ... if you have no experience and are unsure of what to say and when to say it and how to say it ... you are NOT ALONE. We have all been there ... I was there too.

Learning to stay in touch and make contact with your prospects really is an art and it's one that we can all learn (or improve upon).

Following up includes the following:

• Phoning subscribers to your blog - this is NOT as scary as you think .. in fact, you are just following up to say hi and introduce yourself ... You'll be amazed at where some of these connections take you
• Phoning subscribers to your lead capture page - seriously, phoning your prospects makes all the difference in the world, and remember - these are not cold leads, these are people who subscribed to your list and know your name!
• Sending an email to all new subscribers with a personal welcome - you want to make sure your prospects have your information. If you connected on the phone, followup and include any information you talked about on the phone.
• Sending a broadcast email with new information, new resources and news, keeping your prospects informed - it's important to keep in touch on a regular basis ... each time you email your list you will find that someone new responds with questions or needs help. This gives you the opportunity to continue building that important relationship.
• Invite your prospects to see your business plan ... you never know who is going to be interested until you ask!

Don't know what to say? Ask your sponsor for help ....
Don't have a sponsor to help? Ask us ...

Success online is all about the size and responsiveness of your list. Learn to master your auto-responder, master online advertising and you will soon have a list with which you can master the art of follow-up and grow any business!

Focus all your online advertising to attracting subscribers to your list ... build your list and learn to follow-up with your new subscribers ... build a strong relationship of trust and reliability. Be available to answer your prospects questions and if you don't know the answer ... say so and do your best to find the answer.

As your prospects come to learn they can trust what you say and follow what you do they will also follow you into your business.

Be a leader and attract leaders to your business.

Until next time ... work on these skills and be the Master of Your Business!

Have a great day!

Janet Legere
Business Coach and Mentor
Coaching Leaders in Business Online Since 1999

Learn How You Can Do Well By Doing Good
http://www.helpingourplanet.com/

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